Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject: Even Legends Die: The story of the Deaths of Meeko and Keeko

Note: I've found with stories this long it works better to resize the window to about the size of a piece of paper so the lines aren't so long when reading, especially with the story below. "Longest Individual Synopsis" should be the title. lol (Game was played on Saturday May 26th, 2007)

Even Legends Die: The story of the Deaths of Meeko and Keeko
A synopsis written through the eyes of Cooncarin Trunks

Prologue

“Thank you young man, you may leave” I said as I handed the messenger boy at my door a couple copper for his troubles. “This can’t be good” I thought to myself as I opened the letter. It was addressed to me, but Lytle, Solomon, Urza, and Hewill as well. There’s no way the king would contact so many highly experienced adventurers unless it was either an emergency or was finally granting us all lordships and giving thanks for what we’d done for Givemea. I had little doubt it was the former.
After reading on, I learned my first instincts were correct. The letter didn’t describe much except to come to the castle the next morning. The others all lived in Pleasantville, so I would have to wait until they arrived to get word with them. Knowing that we would almost for sure be leaving the city I packed my bags and told Lucky to take good care of the guild while I was away.
The next morning I arrived at the castle at the same time as Solomon, Lytle, and Hewill. Urza was nowhere to be found. “Where’s the pretty and strong one?” I asked.
“Urza is busy now, but we brought Number One to help with whatever problem the King may have” replied Lytle. Number One is a fairly experienced magic user, and we almost never have enough of those.
“Good enough” I answered. After some reminiscing and discussion of what may be going on, Lytle became impatient.
“I don’t care if our meeting isn’t for another 30 minutes, we’re going in now”, he yelled at the guard.
“But, but, sir, I was told…” muttered the guard as Lytle pushed him away, marching towards the throne room. Upon arriving to the throne room the king was nowhere to be seen.
“The king is in the war room, waiting for you now” said Vader from a corner. Vader is the King’s highest ranking magic user, out experienced by none in Givemea that I know of.
“To have a meeting in the war room means this is of the most serious of matters” I thought to myself”, but was smart enough not to say anything at this point. I was with much more experience adventurers than myself, and anything I said would probably be dismissed immediately. “Better to sit quietly” I thought.
“Thank you for coming Lytle, Solomon, and Hewill,” said the king, “I know you are very busy managing Pleasantville, and I appreciate your haste.” I was disgusted at the fact that he didn’t even mention Number One and I, but once again decided it was best not to say anything. “ Let me start by saying that we don’t have much time, and the world is in danger.”
“Interesting way to start a conversation” smirked Solomon.
“So, this isn’t about you donating a new building to us, is it” laughed Lytle.
“This is a very serious matter. We don’t have time joke. Now let’s get down to business” roared the King.
“There’s always time to joke, and whatever it is, I’m sure I could handle it with one arm tied behind my back” smirked Lytle again. Almost laughing he said “Bring whatever it is on”. And all the king said in reply was
“Keeko”. That shut everybody up. We were all listening. “Do you all remember a few years back when you discovered the gem of swirling colors, and sold it to me for a an outrageously expensive price.” We did. “Cooncarin, I think you were a part of that group, but were still fairly new to adventuring” Finally, some recognition. “Well, anyway, it’s stopped swirling. In fact, it’s slowly starting to turn black”
“What does that mean” asked Solomon?
“We aren’t 100% sure, but we have a good idea” replied the King. “We think it has to do with the balance between Meeko and Keeko.” Just hearing their names made everyone shutter. Although Keeko is the only one who could almost be considered evil, neither of them ever really meant good news. Combine their immense knowledge and insurpassable magical power with a curiosity as strong as Meeko and you’ve got one interesting combination. “Nobody has seen Meeko in a while, and our sources think they know why. It seems that Keeko has done the impossible. Somehow, he split Keeko into 4 parts, while stealing almost all of his powers. Before, when they were equal the gem was swirling different colors. Now that Keeko is slowly able to control all the magic it is turning black. If and when that gem turns completely black it’s all over. I’m sure some of you have noticed that not all magic is working properly right now”
“Yes,” said Hewill. “Just yesterday I had another explosion with one of my simpler spells.”
“We told you to stick with garbage control” chuckled Solomon.
“I believe we have no choice but to find these 4 parts of Meeko, and somehow get that back together” said the King. “And if it means killing Keeko in the process, so be it” he added.
“Well, good luck everybody” murmured Hewill. “I’m going back to Pleasantville.”
“You’re not going anywhere” said Lytle. “It’s going to take all of us to get this done. We’ll be leaving right away. Any clue as to where the first one will be, King?”
“Oh, there’s plenty I haven’t told you yet,” replied the King. “Not only do we think we know where the first Meeko part is, we have also developed a way to hopefully stop or at least slow down Keeko if you come across him. We are almost 100% positive that it was Keeko who was influencing the Swatrs government, causing them to act so abnormally. When we discovered this, we started work on some very powerful magical items that took quite a while to finish. The King handed Lytle a dagger, and Hewill a ring. He continued, “The ring is a very powerful magical ring of holding, that we designed specifically to hold Keeko in place. It won’t hold him for long though, which is where the dagger comes in. The dagger is meant to stab and kill Keeko. Remember, only use these items if you must.”
“Cool, a ring of Keeko holding, and a dagger of Keeko stabbing” said Hewill, effectively naming the new found artifacts.
“Whatever, let’s move out” said Lylte, clearly eager to leave.
“One last thing” said the King hurridly. “We think one of Keeko’s parts is in the Black Forest. We are also confident that one Keeko part can point out where the others are. Like a trail of bread crumbs.
“Sounds good” I said, finally adding something of my own. Even if it wasn’t much.

Chapter One

The Black Forest was nearby, so we left almost immediately. All we had to do first was purchase some food, magical components, and of course check out the local magic shop for new fairs. (They had none) Luckily, Lytle had Boots of Speed, which would be instrumental to the success of this adventure. After packing up we got on, and went off. Lytle was almost always ahead of us on the trail, until we came to the edge of the forest. After double checking our maps we decided it was just too big to explore all of.
“What about a flying spell on Lytle?” suggested Hewill.
“That’ll be perfect,” replied Solomon. “Even after it runs out he can run much faster than we can and scout out the rest of the forest, and return with the results.
“Ok, if I’m not back in 1 ½ days then, come looking for me” said Lytle as Hewill prepared the spell. Declaring “Up, up, and away” declared Lytle, as he took off blazingly into the air like some sort of super human. We waited a full day until Lytle returned.
“Good news?” asked Hewill.
“I guess you could say it’s a good news, bad news sort of thing” replied Lytle. He quickly told us what we were going to be up against. “After the flying spell wore off I kept running until I discovered a small clearing. I drank a potion of invisibility so nothing could see me, and checked the place out,” Lytle continued. “There were two iron golems in the middle of this clearing, surrounded by bug bears with displacer beasts. The displacer beasts seemed to be under the control of the bug bears.”
“Bug bears are usually too stupid to use pets or conjure Iron golems. This must be Keeko’s doing,” said Solomon.
“That’s what I thought” replied Lytle. “Luckily, they do sleep sometimes. So that will be our best chance to attack.”
“I have an even better idea” said Solomon. “I’ve always wanted to use this spell, insect plague. It will send forth millions of bugs to literally eat away at the living creatures. We can all surround the opening so if anything runs away we can kill them”
“Perfect” said Lytle. We put the plan into action as soon as possible. The spell worked perfectly, with only a couple bug bears running out, and Lytle quickly killing them. With the creatures dead, we just had some inactive (currently) iron golems to deal with.
“As soon as we get to close they’ll attack, and they have poisonous breath” said Hewill.
“This will be no problem,” said Lytle. I’ll take on my own, if you guys can handle the other.
“Deal” we all replied” Hewill, Number One, and I all cast lightning bolt on the first golem. It practically melted as it died. With the first dead, and the second slowly moving towards us, Lytle snuck in from behind. Using his wonderful strength and thieving techniques he back stabbed that golem. One shot, and it was dead, on the ground.
“So let me get this straight. Three lightning bolts, or your backstab. Equal? How is that possible?” I asked.
“I am Lytle” is all he said. We pried both iron golems open to find a little fuzzite, that looked just like Meeko, except smaller. Boy, did he seem excited. When Solomon asked,
“Where’s the rest of you?” all he did was point north. “Looks like we’re heading north”
“We need a better mode of transportation,” argued Lytle. “Call the King with the magic mirror” After some arguing we got our way. Vader teleported to us and handed over two, that’s right TWO, magic carpets.
“How long has the king been holding out on us?” asked Solomon jokingly.
“As long as you’ve known him” was Vader’s only reply.

Chapter Two

Flying into Swatrs didn’t take long at all with the magic carpets. After a couple hours the little Meeko slowly started to point downward, until he started pointing backwards. He reversed until we found our destination. A huge lake. Some simple spells revealed the dangers down below. First off, a dragon turtle. Something none of us had seen before. Blending into the water was a water elemental as well. It could literally create 20 foot waves, and pound you to death with them. The water elemental wasn’t much of a problem.
“We’ll just use our bag of tricks” said Solomon. He kept throwing magical cows or sheep into the water, causing the elemental to come up and attack. And that’s when we’d hit him with lightning spells. That only worked a few times until he figured it out. After Solomon tried a dismissal type spell (which failed) Lytle came up with an idea.
“I’ll just float down there with my moccasins of levitation, he’ll attack and I’ll run away. Then you guys hit him again. So we cast water walking spells, and he floated down. As soon as the water elemental attack he ran across the water and the elemental gave chase. A huge wave was about to hit Lytle when he yelled “NOW” Bam, ZAP. The creature disappeared into the waves, dead. But now the dragon turtle was coming to attack. Lytle thought projected to us with my magical amulet, “Leave him to me” It was a one on one epic battle, but the dragon had no chance. Lytle kept slashing away until the dragon gave up and swam away. We knew we’d have to kill him though, so Lytle swam down (thanks to a spell of water breathing) and finished him off. He sliced him up until he found the next Meeko. “Let’s move out” he proclaimed after returning to the carpet.
“Show off” said Solomon sarcastically. “Where’s the next Meeko?” he asked next to the little guys. Both hurridly pointed South East, and then began playing games together.

Chapter Three

This trip wasn’t as quick since we had to keep asking the Lil Meekos where to go, as they kept playing with each other.
“God, you guys are annoying” kept proclaiming Solomon. “Finally, we’re almost there” he gasped when the Meekos began to point downward when he asked the same question we’d been asking for hours. This time we were above a cave, but what we saw wasn’t pleasant at all. There at the entrance, next to a dozen worgs and 4 etins, was Gary the Green dragon.
“Impossible” I said. “You killed him years ago, and then I helped stop the evil from resurrecting him. We cut his head off, and burned his body. There was nothing left”
“Anything is possible when it comes to Keeko, but let’s check to make sure” said Solomon as he began to cast a spell of true seeing. “Definetly an illusion. Nothing to worry about” was his answer.
“I’d still rather not fight the etins and worgs if we don’t have to” said Lytle. “Hewill, what can you do about that?”
“Keeko isn’t the only one who can use illusions” replied Hewill. “Give me a minute” Soon, there appeared to be a huge rockslide next to the cave. The stupid worgs and etins began to run and fall down the side of the mountain.
“This is our chance” yelled Lytle as he jumped off the carpet, running into the cave” The rest of us stayed back, knowing that Lytle could hide much better than the rest of us. But, the little Meekos were so excited to find their 3rd brother they jumped off as well, distrupting our plan. Solomon and I took one of the carpets into the cave to follow them, just in time to see Lytle killing an etin and grabbing the 3rd Meeko in the back of the cave. He jumped on the carpet screaming “Go, go, go”, and we listened.
“Where to now, Meekos?” asked Solomon. He had inadvertently become the babysitter of the little tikes. All of them pointed towards Acirema.

Chapter Four

It was at this point that we realized almost all of our magic spells had stopped working. Luckily the magical items were still alright. A couple hours later we found our destination, not even really needing the Meekos to realize we were in the right spot. Down below was a small shack surrounded by chimeras. Solomon used true seeing to find out that there was a ghost inside of the shack, which nobody wanted to deal with. Like good adventurers we started to plan out what to do. But, the little Meekos all jumped off and ran towards the shack, alerting the chimeras to our position.
“What are they doing!” yelled Solomon, but it was to late. We thought we were as good as dead, but the three little Meekos seemed to have gotten some power back. They blasted the chimeras, scaring them all away. We landed just in time to see all four little Meekos surrounding the ghost, holding him in place. Sol walked up confidently, and as a high level cleric of paladin turned the ghost. Now that the Meekos were free they recombined into one normal Meeko.
“Hello!” he chirped in his high pitched voice normally, like nothing had even happened.
“Yes, hello” came from behind us, in a similar Fuzzite voice, but much lower. We turned around to see Keeko standing there. Hewill held his hand up to use his ring, and the over confident Keeko did nothing to stop him. The ring worked perfectly, holding Keeko in place. We knew we only had a couple minutes though, and the look on Keekos face made us want to hurry. Lytle quickly called the King. Very calmly he asked what we should do
“Kill Keeko” he said.
“Are you sure, King? Will that ruin magic? What will happen if we do that?” asked Solomon.
“We don’t have much of a choice, now do we” was his only answer.
Number One, Solomon, and I all flew away with as much of our personal belongings that we could hold, leaving Lytle and Hewill to do the dirty deed. We flew away because we figured there would be a small explosion when Keeko died, like when he touched Meeko. We had no idea how big it would actually be.
From the distance we could just make out Lytle stabbing Keeko. But, just as Lytle began to stab Keeko, Meeko yelled “No” and jumped in front of the blade, causing them both to be hit by the dagger. Later I found out that the dagger slowly transformed into a huge sword as Lytle stabbed Keeko. It was also slowly draining the life energy from Lytle. That’s where it’s true power came from, which is perhaps why the King had given the dagger to him. The blast was huge, utterly destroying everything around. We flew back to the site, just as the carpet fell apart. (The blast had damaged it quite a bit) We gathered Lytle and Hewill, and Solomon used a raise dead spell to bring them back to life. But, they would also need a restoration spell to fully heal Lytle since the dagger had aged and taken away some of his strength. After begging the King to send Vader to come pick us up, he reluctantly did so.

Chapter Five

Back in Givemea Lylte ended up buying both a restoration and wish spell to fully heal him back to the way he was. “Tell me, did you know the dagger would do this to me the whole time?” asked Lytle of the King.
“Yes, but we did not tell you for good reason. For the good of the country.”
“Well then, pay for the spells to heal me” was Lytle’s answer.
“I’m afraid not. You did this for the country, not for reward. I will not pay you money to do something you are supposed to do. Especially you who are a lord in my country.”
“That’s bull” is all I could think. We also asked for a parade in return, but the King said that nobody would know what the parade was for since we couldn’t tell anybody what really happened.
“Very few even know who Meeko and Keeko are” was his justification. So in return for all of that work our only reward was a meal at the King’s table. But, I did go home proud of what we had done. For ever more, we would be remembered as saviors of the word, and killers of the impossible._________________